On August 21, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev announced that he was in full control of the situation after the 60-hour August Putsch in Russia.
The August Putsch in Russia of 1991 was an attempt to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from the post of President of the USSR, organized by a group of conservative-minded conspirators from the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the government of the USSR, the army and the KGB, in the period August 19 - August 21, 1991.
The leaders of the coup believed that Gorbachev's reformist policy had gone too far and that the new Union of Sovereign States, which Gorbachev began to negotiate, granted too much autonomy to the republics. Although the coup failed after two days and Gorbachev returned to power, the event permanently destabilized the Soviet Union and contributed to the banning of the CPSU and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The main goal of the conspirators was “preventing the collapse of the USSR”, which, according to the putschists, would begin on August 20 of this year, with the signing of the first document of the union treaty, transforming the USSR into a confederation of independent states. The document was to be signed on August 20, between representatives of the RSFSR and Kazakhstan, and the other republics were to join by October 22, 1991.
The resistance to the members of the Committee who were trying to seize power was led by the political leadership of the RSFSR, led by President Boris Yeltsin, Vice President Alexander Rutskoy, Prime Minister Ivan Silaev and Chairman of the Supreme Council Ruslan Khasbulatov. At the call of the Russian authorities in front of the building of the union parliament, called the White House, many representatives of various social groups flocked - students, intellectuals, veterans of the War in Afghanistan, and even criminal elements.
At the end of the coup, Yeltsin spoke out in defense of Gorbachev's legitimate power and the defense of a free Russia. Gorbachev himself returned from Foros to Moscow, together with Rutskoy and Silaev, on board a Tu-134 aircraft. The members of the Committee were arrested. On live broadcast, Yeltsin, in the presence of Gorbachev, signed a decree to terminate the activities of the CPSU on the territory of the RSFSR, in his own way fulfilling the concerns of the putschists, depriving Gorbachev of the power that his party had granted him.